Mercs with ranged damage capabilities.

[beyer]

This is my first crew of mercs and I though it would be cool to have some mobile snipers. And some genestealers. Just to see how it fans out.
I haven't decided on the dirty trick yet, but depending on how efficient getting to high ground with the snipers is, I am thinking of using Surveyed Ground to move a tower or rooftop building full of cover within first turn teleport range of my snipers. This way I ought to have good line of fire from turn two.
The Old guard is there to move towards objectives, mow down light infantry on the way (move and fire!) and generally fire as many bullets as a two-man squad of veterans can while keeping their mobility.
The fresh meat is there as a backup in case something nasty slips though the lines. The heavy is there to hide out like a coward and blind-fire his way into infamy.


Mercenary Crew
Standard

2 Models
Old Guard, Veteran, Pollux
Articulated Weapon Harness
Particle Beam Rifle
Notes: RC 2+. May move and fire with them nasty shooters and have 3 AP each. Night vision and reluctant.

1 Model
Sniper, Regular, Blooded Warrior, Limax
Personal Teleporter, Beam Booster
Particle Beam Rifle
Notes: RC 2+. Can teleport unto high structures and behind cover. DR 5, 4 W and regeneration coupled with constant cover should keep him alive and functioning.
It might be possible to swap blooded warrior for assassin, to boost the particle rifle to 7+d6 which will often cause 2 wounds per shot, but he loses 1 DR and 1 W which I think might help keep him alive for much longer.

1 Model
Sniper, Regular, Edasii
Heavy Armoured Suit, Gravity Belt/ Personal teleport, Beam Booster
Particle Beam Rifle
Notes: A 6 plus cover! 3+ RC. Still undecided on the teleporter or the gravity belt. Only M 2 with the armoured suit.

1 Model
Heavy, Regular, Pollux
Quick Loader/Smart Weapons
Rocket Launcher
One rocket shot per turn. 1 AP to load, one to fire. RC 3+. 6+2d6 should penetrate most armour or kill most double wound chacters. Has night vision and reluctant.

2 Models
Fresh Meat, Green, Phact
Monofilament Weapons
Pikes
Notes: Only 1 AP each. Intended to hold back as long as possible to intercept something coming to kill the heavy. The racial bonuses means that they have effective CC 5 with the pikes, even more if I manage to gang up on an opponent. Monofilament equals about a 2+ S increase.

Overall the list has two "hallway sweepers" and two mobile snipers with high damage rifles. The heavy I'm not so sure about. I think he's better off with guided missiles and joining the two fresh meat so they can reload for him. Spend their 2 AP to load and 1 AP from him to fire the gun. With smart weapons the heavy will hit models he cannot see on 4+. This seems awfully nice!

(Edited the Limax Snipers RC to 2+. Forgot the bonus the first time around)

[lorka]

So the models taking care of the primary objective only have 1 w and low armor, this means its easy to kill them and make the rest run away.

You need something to boost your drive, make the Blooded Warrior Sniper an Inspiring Human might be enough, but think its to risky not having someone with Command. Maybe keep him Limax but make him and Natural Leader instead of Blooded Warrior, this give him Drive of 6 + Inspiring and all the leader type abilities, also a neat trick with him would be to teleport in and join a unit that is routing this will auto rally them.

Nice idea with the close combat Phact and yes let them start together with the Heavy so he can fire twice, just remember they might be important somewhere else depending on the scenario so don't let them hang around too long

[beyer]

Yeah it's either fire directly twice with the quick loader or it's fire once from a very safe location.
Being completely out of sight and range seems like a tremendously good idea if return fire is too bad, on the other hand, the quick loader means the heavy can fire once on his own if the phact leave him so they can part ways and still do something when they are apart.

I don't know how crowded a mission objective can get yet, but I figured that the two old guard will lay down a hail of bullets and the snipers can teleport if they have nothing to shoot at so the group comprising the heavily armoured sniper, the limax sniper and the guard will move in somewhat unison unless they are being swamped with cheap infantry.

If they are the mercs get credits for every kill so I might be able to rack something up.

I didn't intend for the guard to do the objective work alone. Everybody needs fire support in games with alternating activations.

I did consider swapping the old guard for an inspiring-human-sergeant-tank, though. But that leaves me with even less models for objective capture.
But damn that's a tough boss!
Could also be a Limax since the slow ability doesn't matter the extra wound, DR and regen would really make him hard to topple.

I might have to play around with that for a bit.

[lorka]

Its easy to build super cool dudes in this system, just look at the balance thread in the core rules part of the forum.

But you need to keep one thing in mind when drooling over you killers: Objectives. It is possible for each player to get 3 points, but both can achieve 2 points on secondary and faction objective, but only one player can get the 3rd primary objective.
So in crew building it important to concentrate on completing the primary objective, which is unknown (well you can plan it the other way, but then you should really mention what scenario and role it is meant for).
In your case I see some snipers that get into position to lay down an impressive kill zone (complete faction goal, try to rout the opponent, maybe get secondary goal); And then a pair of Old Guard that are meant to complete the primary objective backed up by a green unit (primary goal).

The Old Guard and Sniper is also my favorites in the Mercenary list, but see if you can somehow bolster your drive and this crew will be even meaner

Also remember you snipers will most likely be under cover and while most will try to get them killed they will be ignored if you press for the primary objective with other crew members so you don't need to make them so hard to kill.

[beyer]

Well, the altered crew is now a large merc crew, not a standard.

Sergeant, Hero-tank.
Human-inspiring
Grenade launcher, particle beam rifle
Teleporter, Cloaking field, Harness, heavy armour
Notes: Won't die easily, walk and fire with the launcher (although he does move very slowly), particle beam for close range direct firing, teleport to get into and out of tight spots also to rally those in rout. Cloaking field makes him harder to hit.
This guy has inspiring, command and get up and shoot.

Sniper, Hero-unkillable (swapped a green choice for this one)
Limax
Particle beam rifle
Teleporter, booster
Notes: One tough mother. If he can resist suppression he is probably not going to die. If someone can take a shot at him, odds are they are in range for two return shots. Even if they do take his last wound, he always gets one more activation.

Sniper.
Edrasii
Heavy armour, Teleport, booster
Particle beam rifle
Notes: Same as before. Plenty of armour to resist anything the size of particle beam weapons and smaller.

2 identical choices of Fresh meat
Edrasii
Heavy Armour, Teleporter
Particle beam rifles.
Notes: Armour 6 guys running (teleporting) for their lives towards whatever is worth running for. If they stand still they might put a wound on something. Although the appalling RC means it's not worth counting on.

This is 4 guys running for loot, 2 guys giving somewhat effective covering fire, 1 guy holding it all together.
Everyone has a very powerful gun with the slight chance of dishing out 2 wounds per shot.
I still don't know if I should swap some of the survivability of the snipers for better accuracy and night vision or if this setup is just to highly armoured that I can count on my DR not plumetting via fresh-meat casulaties.

I think want to try out these two build and see how it fans out.

[Cilionelle]

Mind if I borrow them to try out against my Brute Squad (see Mr Itisky's Personal Guard thread)?

[beyer]

Borrow?
I'm posting this in an open, I'm never going to claim ownership of a posted list anywhere.
So please do, I'd actually love for someone to try it out before I do.

[lorka]

If the opponent have Psy get him down fast as that is your weak link, besides that it sound like a fun bunch of teleporting heavy armored snipers.

[anaxagorax]

Mar 1, 2011 8:03:45 GMT -5 beyer said:

2 Models
Fresh Meat, Green, Phact
Monofilament Weapons
Pikes

Do pikes ('spears, pikes or staves') have edges to have mono-molecular wire attached to?

[beyer]

I think of them as really REALLY pointy.

The rules do not define edged weapons (german-style definitions are quite absent unfortunately) but the only thing I reckon can't be mono edged are the gloves.

Maybe the rules ought to say that lethal weapons can be fitted with monowire. Gently slicing someone into captivity is sort of counter intuitive. And intuitions seems to be the basis of most of the rules lingo.

[anaxagorax]

My intuition tells me that swords are the only edged weapons available, pikes and spears are stabby things, heavy melee weapons are clubby things and shock gloves are punchy things

[lorka]

Well spears are basically poles with a knife or even a sword at the end. Heavy melee weapons could be an axe or a huge sword even.

I would agree with beyer that lethal weapons can be mono-wired.

My only problem with the melee rules is that pikes seems almost to good, if you want to melee you have two choices really; shock gloves if you want non-lethal and pike if you want lethal.

If you think you need more strength just make a focussed attack with +2, thus changing the combat bonus to a strength bonus, this is the same as a heavy weapon, just better; or focussed +1 making it +1/+1 like a sword.

With the focussed attack rule that I kinda like there really isn't a reason to have different kind of melee weapons, I would just say there is one that is +2 CC Lethal and one +1 CC Non-Lethal and what you call it and how you model it is up to you. The +2 to get out of melee on the pike isn't needed since you only give a pike to someone that want to stay in melee anyways.

[beyer]

Mar 10, 2011 18:04:31 GMT -5 anaxagorax said:

My intuition tells me that swords are the only edged weapons available, pikes and spears are stabby things, heavy melee weapons are clubby things and shock gloves are punchy things

That makes sense balance-wise for the abovementioned reasons.
For now I have pointy pikes on my melee back-ups. If I choose to field them. I think there are better options right now than those two, in this particular set-up.